Australian actor Joel Jackson on the two-year dream that put him alongside Daniel Radcliffe in his breakout role

“I’ve got the love of the chase.”

“I recorded three of my own scenes, that I had stolen from the film, with a friend in around half an hour. I thought, ‘I’m just going to do it –if they like it, they like it and if they don't, at least I’ve tried,’” Joel Jackson tells me ahead of the world premiere of his new film Jungle, which opened the Melbourne International Film Festival in partnership with Grey Goose this month. Jackson is detailing his two-year journey to officially landing a part in Jungle, which, he would later find out, would see him star alongside Daniel Radcliffe.

“I sent it off and they were like, this kid is amazing. We should give him the role … and now we are here. I’ve got the love of the chase,” he adds.

Already tipped as Australia’s next rising star for his role in Seven’s telemovie Peter Allen: Not The Boy Next Door and Foxtel’s Deadline Gallipoli alongside Sam Worthington, 26-year-old Jackson, who grew up in North Western Australia, is about to get a whole lot more attention as Jungle hits cinemas globally. The film is based on the real-life survival tale of Israeli backpacker Yossi Ghinsberg (played by Daniel Radcliffe) who sets off to hike the Amazon with two friends – Swiss teacher Marcus Stamm and American photographer Kevin Gale. Jackson plays Stamm in the harrowing true story of what he himself describes as the crews “last hurrah before they go home and face their responsibilities and the rest of their life,” – albeit one that goes very, very wrong. “It’s about three friends on their very last adventure that will be remembered for the rest of their friendship and the rest of their lives.”

The Australian actor admits it wasn’t always easy playing Stamm, when at times he would reflect on the fact that the scenes he were acting out had in fact really happened. “You do have to remind yourself. No, this hasn’t been written, this is a memory of someone. You get stuck in an emotional place where the film gets really intense and really emotional and really heavy and you just kept reminding yourself that this was someone's life.”

“You go, ‘What would happen to me if I was with my best friends?’”

Jackson is tapping into the real fact that most Australians go on a gap year of sorts with their best friends, often taking risks while travelling that, fortunately, do not have the consequences of the (real-life) characters in Jungle. The storyline will surely touch anyone who has travelled alone or with friends and taken a risk or trusted someone they really didn’t know all that much about. For Ghinsberg and his friends, it was trusting an Austrian man named Karl Ruprechter, who claimed to know the Amazon jungle well enough to lead them on a hike to a remote Indigenous village – the trip would turn into a living nightmare in which the men were stranded for more than three weeks. As is touched on in the film, Ghinsberg would later find out Ruprechter’s claims were false and they were not the first backpacking group to whom he had led into the Amazon.

Jackson’s character, Stamm, is the cautious one in the group. “He is a trepidatious, intelligent young man. He sees a lot of childlike energy in Yossi that could be dangerous. We’ve all got those friends that take risks. I think Marcus is the one who just wants to make sure his friends are okay.”

Of course, Ghinsberg was on set during the filming of the Greg McLean-directed film, which also stars Australian actress Lily Sullivan. For Jackson, this made playing his best friend ever so slightly daunting but all the more rewarding. “On set, you’d walk away and [Yossi] would pull you aside and say, ‘I remember in that moment Marcus was like this, and you did that so well,’” Jackson says, adding Ghinsberg would often say: “[It was like] I saw him say it again,” as if the actor’s portrayal had helped Ghinsberg reimagine, and perhaps better understand, his best friend’s motives. “It is really emotional thinking about it now but you played someone's best friend and that is special.”

Although it was Ghinsberg’s story to tell, Jackson emphasises that he was “much more of a voyeur on set.” “It defined him. Do you know what I mean? He has been telling this story for almost 40 years now, it’s crazy to think about. He was very much there and very much present but he didn't lean on Greg or the producers in any way, shape, or form that I know of,” adding Radcliffe was given the creative freedom as an artist to interpret the character on his own terms.

“The amount of energy he produces in terms of watchability and charisma – it’s effortless,” Jackson says of working with the Harry Potter actor. “He is such a talented actor. He was genuine, intelligent, smart and funny. A great human being.”

While Jackson admits the Swiss accent “was tough,” as was filming in the Bolivian jungle, and the 3.30am wake-up calls for his make-up team to recreate the trench foot his character develops during the film (“Daniel and I would be in make up for like two and a half hours”), he calls the experience working on the film “really special.”

“To tell a real person's story is so much more rewarding. And if family members can get a memory, or something else to hold on to … you hope it kind of turns out that way.”

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